“The poetry of place was a long apprenticeship. It was not inside me. This was a language I had to learn,” says Ana Paula Ribeiro Tavares, whose work is known for its spare language, subtle eroticism, and strong sense of place. A poet and historian, Tavares is the author of seven books and the recipient of numerous prizes. She teaches Lusophone African literature at the Catholic University of Lisbon.

Prior to coming to Lisbon she grew up and lived in many different regions of Angola, serving as, among other roles, the culture delegate for Kwanza-Sul province and heading up the Research Bureau of the Centro Nacional de Documentação e Investigação Histórica in Luanda. She also served on the Angolan Commission of UNESCO. Her recent work includes Words for a Dictionary of Affection (2016) as well as several other collaborations with fellow Lusophone authors.

Ana Paula Tavares was scheduled to speak at Disquiet 2020, and we hope to be able to reschedule her for 2021. You can hear and read her poems in the original and English translation at lyrikline.org, or read Richard Zenith’s translations here.

Maaza Mengiste’s second novel The Shadow King, about the Ethiopian women who fought against the Italian invasion in 1935, “is a beautiful and devastating work; of women holding together a world ripping itself apart” (Marlon James) and “a brilliant novel…compulsively readable” (Salman Rushdie).

An essayist, photographer, and documentarian as well as a novelist, Maaza was a recipient of the 2020 American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Literature Award.

Read her piece  in Lithub about the writing of The Shadow King, listen to an interview, or read one of our favorite essays by Maaza, “This is What The Journey Does” in the New York Review of Books.

Maaza was scheduled to teach a fiction workshop for the third time at Disquiet 2020, and she will, we hope, reprise that role at the rescheduled program in 2021.

You can order The Shadow King here or anywhere books are sold.

“The story of my curly hair,” says Mila, the narrator of Lisbon-based Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s debut novel That Hair, “intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the indirect story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics.” Tin House Books published That Hair (Esse cabelo in Portuguese) this spring in an English translation by Eric M. B. Becker. You can read an excerpt at Lithub, or check out this thoughtful review from Anita Felicelli in the LA Review of Books. Djaimilia’s second novel, Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso, came out (in Portuguese) in 2018 and her work has received multiple awards.

Djaimilia was scheduled to speak for the fourth time at Disquiet 2020 (now Disquiet 2021). Order That Hair here or find it wherever books are sold.

Erica Dawson is “a poet fully aware of her place in time and its potential” (Jericho Brown). Her groundbreaking book-length poem When Rap Spoke Straight to God was published in 2018 by Tin House Books. She has been a regular on the Disquiet faculty since 2014 where, often in collaboration with Arthur Flowers, she has delivered some of the most affecting, virtuosic reading performances we’ve seen, which is saying something. Her essay “Americana,” just published in The Paris Review,  is required reading for the moment. Also, hear her read her poem “No, Kanye, it’s not LIKE we’re mentally in prison” at Poets.org.

Erica was scheduled to teach her Form and Fantasy Workshop at Disquiet 2020 (now Disquiet 2021).

If you don’t already own a copy of When Rap Spoke Straight to God, you can find it here or at a bookstore near you.